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I just a couple days ago started a batch of Moroccan preserved lemons, using a combination of recipes from 2 books I own and a few online.

Basically, near-quarter some Meyer lemons and stuff with salt, then squish them in a jar, releasing some juice and covering it with a little extra juice, close and store in a cool place for a month. Every day for the first little bit, shake them to mix the salt in more.

I've read that you really don't want your lemons sticking out of the liquid, because they'll go bad that way, but I'm a couple days in and mine seem to be floating...

Does anyone have experience with this process that would understand where I need to go from here? Did I use too much salt in the liquid? That could cause things to float more easily, but I haven't read anything about it anywhere, and I figure someone else has done this process enough to understand what's up.

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  • I'll have to look around for something that'll fit in my jars, so that's probably a good workaround. I'm seeing different accounts from different recipes, a lot of which call for not covering with juice until a few days in, so I'll see what's up in a couple days. At that point I may ask you to repost that as an answer.
    – FireSBurnsmuP
    May 7, 2018 at 20:44
  • @thrig That's the solution I ended up using, so I'd suggest you re-submit your suggestion as an answer. For the record, I used sterilized glass fermentation weights, which seemed a good choice for the highly acidic and salty brine.
    – FireSBurnsmuP
    May 29, 2018 at 19:06

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While traditional recipes do not (apparently) use weights, other fermentation texts highly recommend submerging the material being fermented ("Fermented Vegetables", Christopher Shockey and Kirsten K. Shockey) and I had also observed possible mold problems when fermenting lemons myself. Therefore, standard advice would be to weigh the lemons down with something acid resistant (glass would be typical) as the high salt content and shape of the lemons makes them prone to rise above the brine.

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